Customer Reviews

The Path of Minor Planets: A Novel

5 star:		(7)
4 star:		(3)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

This novel is a remarkable find. Beautifully written, with many highly individualized characters, described with sharp and subtle insight. They interact through a cyclical plot that documents the effects of time on ambition (declining)and compassion (increasing). Never predictable, it is always intelligent and profoundly sympathetic to the human condition. The story moves with Comet Swift, from its discovery through two orbits (24 years),with periodic reunions at aphelion and perihelion. The second comet is discovered along the way by the protagonists, the reluctant lovers whose sad and joyous affair is the backbone of the narrative. One of the best I've read in recent years.

I picked this book up because I live in Bay Area and I was interested in reading a Bay Area author. This book is truly a find. The characters are fully realized and the writing is quite beautiful. I have to admit, I did find the first section (the first reunion of the comet) to be a little hard to get into, but I plowed forward, and now I am entirely wrapped up in the narrative. There are lines in this that sparkle--the kind you write down to remember long after you have put down the book. Further, the way time works in this novel is quite astonishing--you believe you're on this linear path where you're marching through the years. However, the narrative keeps circling around these moments. While on some levels this isn't Virginia Woolf (and I am also reading MRS DALLOWAY at the same time), I do find that both Greer and Woolf are interested in the "moment" and the ways in which a moment can resonate but not actually change a life--these moments are not Joycian epiphanies that become public acknowledgments of change. Instead these are touchstones in our lives that we return to again and again and ponder. A great book.

"The Path of Minor Planets" is a reader's delight. Complex. Character-driven. Agile. Beautiful. It's a magnificent, mature work, amazing for a first novelist.

Written in what critics now like to call "psycho-narrative," Greer's book displays a third-person omniscient narrative that bores into its characters heads. It's a risky style: after all, Greer has to populate his characters with enough detail and freshness so that they feel real. And that he does it, not through action or scene or dialog, but for the most part through the subtler, richer stuff of the human brain and its wandering eye. Like "The Waves," "Path..." brings us about as close to our essential humanity as a book can.

"Path..." ostensibly is about a group of astronomers who meet once every six years to celebrate a minor comet discovered by their own academic star, Professor Swift. Their first meeting to witness the comet's passing from a lightless and distant Pacific isle is interrupted by an accident involving the death of a child. Subsequent chapters track characters who were present at the scene through their lives, failed marriages, and stormy careers.

But "Path..." reveals much more. "Path..." shows us the effect of inhabiting different heads, of the space separating human objects in their orbits around one another, of the physical and emotional laws tying us together.

It's unfortunate that Greer's book has thus far been under-appreciated. However, with the talent available to the author, I have no doubt as to his future successes.

I picked this book up because I'd read the short stories in "How I Got Here" and in Ploughshares and Esquire and was excited to read a full-length novel by the same writer, to see if he could pull it off, I guess, because the stories are so powerful and inventive, which sometimes means the novel is going to be a one-trick sort of deal, but The Path of Minor Stars is even better than the stories, and very "novelistic," by which I guess I mean it is in full command of itself, and pursues a vision that kept me interested until the end: the style, on the sentence level, is remarkable--very clear and direct yet leading one in circles--lulling and narcotizing, meandering through paragraphs--until the rug is pulled out from under you every few pages, in a good way. This book is better than The Corrections, which I read at the same time. It will be a shame if the Franzen book overshadows this more controlled debut. Beautiful book.

Path of Minor Planets is Greer's first novel, coming before Confessions of Max Tivoli, which has garnered more attention and praise. Personally, I preferred Path to Tivoli, finding the writing equally strong but the story even better.
Path opens with a group of astronomers and their students gathering in 1965 to watch the return of Comet Swift (named after the organizer of the gathering). Here we're introduced to all the major characters at their varying stages of life-established professors, ambitious/nervous grad students, young children, people at the end or beginning of marriages, etc. During the viewing, they all witness the accidental death of a young island boy and the story moves on from there, using the return of the comet to structure the novel.
The time structure works well as we jump ahead in these lives to see how they've changed. While the comet's cycle forms the novel's backbone, Greer doesn't hold to it slavishly, allowing himself in each cycle's section to meander back and forth over the intervening years. Along the way we are treated to the events, both minor and major, in the characters' lives and the way their lives, like the comet and earth, keep circling each other. Again, due to the difference in ages, there is a lot of variety here, as some characters find first flush of love disappearing, some find their career ambitions thwarted, others move into the twilight of their lives while some into the energetic adolescence. Narrative perspective shifts among the characters and Greer does an excellent job capturing this variety of voice and tone. The characters sound authentic across the spectrum of age and gender and personality, and this authenticity continues throughout the novel as they move into various life stages.
The story is layered and gently, quietly unfolds in the voices of its characters, never lapsing into cliche or predictability. The characters are complex creatures that are likable at times but not at others, admirable one moment, insufferable another. In other words, they're like real people.
Stylistically, the book is generally strong, though Greer has a noticeable habit of swinging for the fence for too many lines. Metaphors and similes are especially frequent and while some are just wonderful, the sheer quantity of them means others are a bit clumsy or contradictory. And at times, after reading a string of them, you want to yell at him to just say the dress was white, the hat red and move the damn story along, but noticeable as this is, it doesn't detract much from the book's pleasures.
There isn't a lot of action here; some will no doubt find it a bit slow, but give it time. The end effect of the style, structure, and characterization is a moving, affecting work that slowly, smoothly pulls you in and envelops you. In the end, you're sad to let go of these characters, always a good sign. Very strongly recommended.

I absolutely loved this book. It was such an ambitious endeavour to capture this story over such a span of years. The writing is phenomonal. I'm recommending it to everyone I know.

Like others, I wasn't immediately drawn into this book, but I stuck with it, and am so glad I did. This is one of those novels that leaves me narrating my day in its prose style all day long, and wishing I could write like this author. Very beautifully written. A story as much about language, literary and scientific, as it is about the characters and plot it contains. I loved it.

Highly intelligent friends and lovers meet at 6 year intervals that coincide with the waxing and waning of a comet that one of them has discovered. I enjoyed the authors method of tying astronomical and human behavior and his philosophical insights of both. What bothered me is the characters behave too much like the orbiting bodies they study, circling each other but not communicating. I know that is the point of it but it was just to much to be believed. This thoughtful, intelligent novel of life, love and astronomy is worth the read.

Because it's an outstanding first novel. I bought the book because I was at a reading by Andy and wanted to find out what happened to Lydia. As I soon found out, there are more characters then Lydia and all equally interesting. It was easy to relate to the characters. Even if one is not a scientist you can still relate to the obsessive behaviour and the choices made in love and relationships. I liked how we would meet them again after six years not knowing every detail of their lives but still able to pick up from where we last saw them.

This is a gorgeous, gorgeous book. I picked it up soon after it came out because the cover caught my eye; was instantly curious after the description of a fiction book focused on astronomy and the summary on the back. I expected to like it, and after my first reading that was exactly my reaction, but a couple years later and after many, many more readthroughs this is without a doubt one of the most excellent books I have ever read.

Greer's language is astonishing, his observations are so applicable to the world and resonate in nearly any situation, his language is breathtaking. His metaphors make you stop and think and look up from the book; almost every other line is something I wish I could remember. The images he conveys and the difficult, almost very confusing plot he effortlessly pulls off is, again, beautiful, and so much more is gained from it after a second (or third, or fourth) read - more observations, more detail, more wisdom from the entire thing. There are so many tiny details that are smile-worthy, for lack of a better expression, and so many phrases that I was reading too quickly to notice at first but that really are wonderful and perfect. As multiple reviewers from the inside cover say and as the character Kathy in the novel notices, the "tiny hidden flaws in ordinary people" are what he is drawing out in this book - it is almost entirely character driven but it is incredible enough that to me, it does not get slow and it never gets boring, and the plot never disappears. There is always something new to find, every character is somehow likable and flaws are made understood and all right and acceptable without ever being brushed off (in fact, the characters' flaws is in many ways the focus of the novel). I would say that my favorite part is the many connections between astronomy, stars and comets (you do not have have to know anything about them to read the book), and human life, but I'm not sure that's true - it is honestly all too difficult to choose from. All the characters I love more every time I read it.

It's hard to get into at first (after the very beginning, which has a very slight resemblance to some of Contact, by Carl Sagan), but it is more than worth it. This is Andrew Sean Greer's first novel and while his second, The Confessions of Max Tivoli, has gotten much more press, I believe that The Path of Minor Planets deserves that and much more. This is absolute proof that an author's age has nothing to do with talent, and every time I look through this book again I think that is what it is: raw talent. It is very difficult for me to come up with a fault that really, honestly means anything about this book; I can barely recommend it enough and I encourage trying to get through the whole thing even though it's difficult at first, especially if you like beautiful (but never overdone) descriptive writing as much as I do. I have never been able to pick a favorite book but if I had to, this very well might be it. It is so much more than a romance novel (I think it is barely that at all...it's about how people *are*) and if it were up to me it would be assured to be in print for generations.

Read this book. Really.

Five hundred stars.